My Heart Stopped Beating
by Spring Zephyr
Summary: Math homework is put on hiatus, gender roles are discussed, and confessions are made. JirouMomo.


"Jirou."

A soft voice jostles her back to reality – ever since Yaoyorozu invited the entire class to her house for a study session, Jirou has been a lot more open about asking the other girl for help. It's also been working out pretty well for her, considering how in love with Yaoyorozu's voice she is. In love with everything about Yaoyorozu.

Yaoyorozu continues, both her voice and the look on her face steady with a hint of teasing, "Perhaps your lack of attention is the real reason you're struggling with math."

Chin still resting on her palm, Jirou turns to look directly at Yaoyorozu. She doesn't immediately say anything, and Yaoyorozu mistakes the enamored look on her face for something else.

"It was a joke," she insists quickly. "I-I didn't mean to imply you were inept."

"Don't worry about it," Jirou replies.

"You're not struggling that much. You clearly have an aptitude."

An aptitude? Now _that_ was a joke. Math is Jirou's worst subject, and just because she's not failing like Kaminari doesn't mean she's excelling. But Yaoyorozu is the type to soothe and apologize and encourage, and this time, Jirou decides to apologize before Yaoyorozu has a chance to – because she's so polite and gentle to everyone, she apologizes even when she's done nothing wrong.

Jirou rarely apologizes for anything. Maybe it's time she starts, at least with certain people.

"I'm sorry," Jirou tries to emphasize the words in a way that sounds sincere and not sarcastic. Yaoyorozu isn't stupid like some of their classmates are, so she'll probably understand. Because it's her and Yaoyorozu, it's them, and lately, Jirou's been thinking about how they get each other so well. "I'm a little distracted."

Yaoyorozu thinks about this for a moment, then the tension eases out of her shoulders. "I suppose we have been at this for the last fory minutes," she mutters, and asks, "What's on your mind?"

She is, perhaps, a little skeptical about actually needing a break. But since Yaoyorozu prefers serious, thoughtful conversations to joking and making small talk, she's probably grateful for the change.

"Stupid stuff," Jirou admits. "Like, why is it bad for the boy to not take the lead in relationships? People talk about 'wearing the pants' in a relationship as if it's wrong for the girl to take charge."

Yaoyorozu sets her pencil down. She leans back in her chair and thinks, her dark hair falling away from her face and neck, her chest sticking out as she drapes her arms over the back of the chair. She is the picture of feminity, and it hurts Jirou to think there are people out there who might not appreciate that, because she is strong both physically and mentally, her mind is brilliant, and she'll be a great leader some day, a great hero – heck, there are few, if any, people on this Earth who could be Yaoyorozu's equal, and it's so, so unfair that some day it might make her a target.

Jirou wants desperately to be her equal.

There are thousands of professional female heroes in the world, and people are still having these conversations in class, on the news, about dress codes and starting families and whether or not media coverage is biased towards "sexy" heroes, like Mt. Lady or Midnight.

For what it's worth, Yaoyorozu is thinking about her question seriously. "It's not a healthy way to look at the roles women and men are supposed to play," she begins, then realizes her mistake. "What are the roles we're 'supposed' to play anyway?"

"Men are the breadwinners and women take care of the home..." Jirou grumbles, vaguely reciting something she's heard dozens of times before.

Not from her own parents. They're cool about that kind of thing. Not from anyone at school either. Surprisignly, the more Jirou thinks about it, the more she realizes she doesn't _know_ where that phrase comes from, yet it's been drilled into her more thoroughly than any hero law or combat lesson or anything else that's currently more relevant or important to her life than who's _supposed_ to look after the house twenty years from now.

And in Jirou's case, it's doubtful that person is going to be a man regardless. She wastes time thinking about things like this because she's so in love with possibly straight best friend – a possiblity that is becoming a little less possible the more Jirou knows about her.

"Who decided that anyway?" Yaoyorozu asks.

"I dunno. I guess it's tradition? Like, if we go all the way back to when humans first invented fire, it kind of makes sense – sheltering the people that allow the human race to continue existing."

"There was also a time women were treated as property."

Yaoyorozu is relentless as she says that. It's not something Jirou likes thinking about, personally. That if she'd been born a few hundred years earlier, she would've been married off without a say in the matter, assuming she hadn't died of dysentery or some other disease she's only heard of in _the Oregon Trail_ first.

"Our society has, in theory, evolved beyond the point of such power differentials being _necessary," _Yaoyorozu continues, and she says the word necessary with such an air of distaste that it almost makes Jirou giddy. "To suggest that, by relinquishing a role of dominance dictated by tradition and societal norms, a man becomes emasculated, weak, and inferior – or comparable to a woman – is an antiquated idea."

Such beautiful articulation. Such an analytical way of looking at things. There's no questioning why Jirou is in love.

"The idea that all women prefer to be subjugated is offensive," Yaoyorozu adds.

She seems to have said her piece, or Jirou would wonder how much more she had to say on the subject. How many times Yaoyorozu has heard "men are dominated" and "women are submissive" in the same way Jirou has heard about pants and breadwinners, without quite remembering where.

She's also a little dumbfounded by how Yaoyorozu says everything so succinctly, until there's nothing that Jirou can add and all she can do is agree. So that's what she does, she vocalizes her agreement, and then surprises herself with a bout of courage that's certainly 98% stupidity and 2% that fleeting hope that maybe she understands Yaoyorozu as well as she thinks, maybe they aren't as different as she once believed:

"Then what if we both wore skirts? In… in a relationship?"

Yaoyorozu offers a tiny smile, eyebrows raised. She sounds as calm and collected as ever, but there's a faint dusting of red on her cheeks. "Jirou... Is that your way of asking me out?"

"If it was, would you say yes?" Jirou asks back. "It'd be like – like a big middle finger to all of the people whose minds are stuck in the seventeenth century. We're both girls, we both kick ass, and we don't need any 'pants' to prove it."

It's not the confession Jirou had ever imagined herself giving, but from the way her entire body warms up, in a fuzzy, gleeful kind of way, Jirou is pretty sure she already knows the answer. Before she even hears the words, her heart skips a beat.

**Sometimes I'm okay at titling, but most of the time I wait until I'm posting the fic to realize I forgot to even think about a title.**


End file.
